Ready or Not (2019)

★★★
Ready or Not is the kind of horror movie for which the creators probably had a blast brainstorming different ideas and compounding those ideas with more to arrive at a final draft that is simply fun to make and fun to watch once filmed. It can be produced at a reasonable cost and marketed purely on an idea, and if that idea is sufficiently intriguing, it can act as a hook that can reel in curious viewers and reward them with a good show. The movie isn't scary in the sense that it's terrifying. It isn't scary all that much, but it is inventive. If a horror movie doesn't deliver on the usual expectations by design but has a different agenda, then it can still be deemed a success. Yes, there is blood, violence, screaming and suspense, but they are the foundation for the clever and sometimes humorous unraveling of a story that starts simple enough before leading to surprising places.

The Relic (1997)

★★★
The Relic is so much fun that it's easy to forgive its shortcomings, and there are plenty. This is a gory monster movie that takes place in a vast building with corridors that are perfect for a mutated beast to roam free and attack unsuspecting prey. If this sounds pretty routine, well, it is, but Peter Hyams directs the film like a well-oiled machine. There are occasional surprises to go along with the formulaic elements.

Return to Paradise (1998)

★★★★
Before he found his groove as a reliable comedic actor in the 2000s, Vince Vaughn starred in this little-seen and barely-remembered drama from 1998 about two friends who contemplate whether they should help a third friend in need. Return to Paradise premiered in the middle of the late '90s creative surge for mainstream and independent films and costarred the late Anne Heche, who was on a roll during this time with appearances in Six Days, Seven Nights, Gus Van Sant's Psycho and Volcano, while finding time to appear in I Know What You Did Last Summer in a small role. Vaughn himself had recently appeared in Swingers and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, knocking on the door to stardom and proving here he could carry an emotionally heavy narrative.

Rock Star (2001)

★★★
Rock Star is one of those standard rags-to-riches stories. Through an amazing coincidence, one faithful fan of a heavy metal band will get his chance at stardom with the same band. The plot contains many elements akin to such a movie, yet it all plays out with satisfaction. Perhaps it's Mark Wahlberg's giddy-eyed performance that saves the day, or it could be director Stephen Herek's faithful recreation of the 1980s music scene. Either way, I enjoyed the movie. It has a lot of light humor, pleasant surprises and good songs.

Robots (2005)

★★½
The world of C.G.I. animation is opening up the doors to all sorts of visual artists who can't wait to impress us with the images they can create, but it's also opening up the doors to all these screenwriters who want to impress us with how smart they are. Actually, "smart" is the wrong word. The writers of Robots, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, are smart guys, but their script reveals that they've seen a lot of movies, so they're really just trying to impress us with their knowledge of movies.

The Raid: Redemption (2012)

★½
The Raid: Redemption is a con job. It’s like the friend who buys a new car and takes you for a spin to show it off only to have it break down on the freeway. The story involves an elite police squad in Jakarta that descends on a 15-story apartment building to arrest a drug lord, all the while contending with his henchmen the whole way up. It’s an interesting concept, but the movie emphasizes its fight scenes so much that it capsizes. The story just wasn’t developed well enough to provide any compelling reason for this risky mission. As a result, there are lots of fights, lots of deaths, lots of bullets, but it adds up to nothing.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

★★½
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a refreshing return to the source material to create a movie that fans will instantly recognize. Rather than introduce new characters and situations, writer/director Johannes Roberts faithfully brings the stories of the first two video games of the series to the big screen, perhaps because he sensed how tired the Paul W.S. Anderson adaptations were getting by the end. It’s a commendable goal. Anderson jettisoned much of the series’ mythology in favor of his own narrative, and though his formula was financially successful (his movies grossed over $1 billion), it nevertheless felt like something was lacking. Anderson’s series peaked at the third entry (Resident Evil: Extinction) and went on the decline afterwards, with each installment making enough money to justify another sequel without any sense of direction on where to take it all.

Radio (2003)

★★
Before I discuss the plot of Radio, before I say anything about the acting or credibility, I want to talk about the score, which is among the most annoying and self-important I've ever heard. James Horner is a fine musician, but here, he employs a sickening soundtrack with female vocal overtones to highlight the noble simplicity of the movie's main character. He used music with better results in his vastly superior Titanic score.

Rebound (2005)

★½

Rebound looks every bit like a way to receive a fast influx of cash. If you're a screenwriter and need to pay your debts right now, lest the loan sharks break your legs, then all you have to do is write a kiddie sports movie about a weak underdog team that improves under the leadership of a new coach, preferably one that doesn't really want to be there. Just about any studio is willing to give this kind of story the green light, because it features a flawed hero who can do a quick turnaround and give the false impression that he grew up. Hire a name actor to play him, and then populate the rest of the cast with unknowns.